Juergen Bartels, JB

It was another triumph for Guy Hands, head of the Nomura division and now installed as chairman of Le Meridien. Mr Hands is well known for his head hunting skills, and immediately approached the highly successful career hotelier Juergen Bartels to become his chief executive officer.

Indeed, this was more than a career placement as Mr Bartels or 'JB' as he likes to be known, has invested $15 million of his own money in the group, and the objective is to float Le Meridien on the London stock market in five to seven years. If this plan is successful, this will not be the first time JB has made a fortune out of owning equity in a major hotel group. Between 1995 and 1998 he guided Westin Hotels through a $400 million management buy-out to a trade sale for $1 billion.

Yet just three months into his latest venture JB faces a new challenge, the worldwide downturn in hotel bookings that has followed the terrorist attacks in the United States. How is he coping?

'I was in New York on September 11 and felt the full impact of the devastation,' he says. 'People were all very depressed by the events, and it was not an easy time at all, but we will have to keep moving forward. Some people even questioned my visiting Dubai this week, but I think that just because they do not know the Middle East'.

JB was in Dubai to address senior staff on the group's radical new strategy that include the introduction of a new style of Tech & Art room to many properties. These $75,000 per room refits introduce flat panel TVs, power showers and luxurious beds in a modern, minimalist environment, and such 'cool' hotels are apparently the most profitable in the industry worldwide.

By 2004 JB intends to have 25% of Le Meridien's hotel rooms switched to the Art & Tech design, and he is presently in the process of persuading Middle East hotel owners that this is the way forward. But is he not worried about investing in the region at this difficult time.

' The hotel business is not a short term business and we have to think beyond the next few months or a year,' he explains. 'Our view is that if Middle East travellers are not going to the US and Europe they will stay in the Middle East, and that will help to compensate for the visitors from the US and Europe that decide not to come here.

'As a group we are lucky in being biased towards Europe and the recovery in visitors should come from Europe first. So that leaves us better placed than some, but of course none of us really know what is going to happen in the next few months'.

After 40 years in the hotel business, JB has seen it all before and is clear in his ambition for the Le Meridien Group. He wants to see Le Meridien as the number one upscale hotel chain measured in terms of occupancy, average room rate and profitability. And his $1.25 billion investment programme for the next three years is deliberately contra-cyclical. By investing during tougher times, JB thinks Le Meridien will have what the clients want when things get better.

It is a bold strategy that will see Le Meridien offering the kind of accommodation associated with the best boutique hotels of the world, and standby for that stock market flotation in 2006-8, or a surprise trade sale to another group.